Missed the boat for Reading Festival Tickets

Festival goers arriving at the main entrance to the
Reading Festival carrying luggage, Reading, UK 2/2
Well, what a contrast. I've been away for a bank holiday weekend in Herefordshire, uploaded some stock from the Reading Festival and I'm only a week and a half away from Japan. Last week saw a welcome break from bad weather on Thursday night, when the festival goers were arriving for the festival so I drove down to the site to get a few shots. My shots have only just cleared QC so, what with the bank holiday, I've missed the opporuntity to sell on the back of the Reading Festival tickets fiasco but here are a few in any case.

Whilst I was wandering up and down outside the site, a bloke came legging it past me with a security guard in hot pursuit. I quietly strolled after them and found myself taking photos of the bloke being apprehended. Of course, these probably won't sell as no-one would risk suggesting that he was guilty of anything, and in any case, I can't confirm it. I did overhear that he was being accused of snatching a bag of wristbands (being shown to him in the second shot) but his response was "you can't prove anything" or words to that effect. I can safely use this to illustrate that festivals are hot-beds of crime and the security team and the local police always have a busy old weekend, this year the organiser's sent out this Music festival wristband warning

Alledged thief being accosted and searched by security guards at Reading Festival after running from the main entrance

The rest of the photos show some of the local traders making the most of the passing trade and a few people looking for tickets, just your average fair outside a major festival

Temporary off-license set up on Richfield Avenue during the Reading Festival, Reading, UK showing crates of beer being sold

Two teenagers hold placards asking for tickets to buy for the Reading Festival on Richfield Avenue, Reading, UK

Abstract editorial? Oh dear...

Blue pyramid glass bulidings against a blue sky
Ho hum, this week has been spent at work and the weather has not been stock-friendly in the evenings. I've had another two batches of images go through QC and one or two images, though perfect technically, probably won't sell. They've been plonked in my "Creative" pseudonym as I don't expect them to sell and I don't want them to affect my main pseudonym's Rank. The main problem with them is that I don't have a property release so they can't even be used "creatively", which leaves them in the wilderness of non-editorial non-released subjects - which I am quickly becoming a specialist in :-(

At least the Olympics are exciting for us Brits...

Abstract of wooden clad multi-storey car park in Reading, UK

Close-up of the pages of a book 1/6

The image on the left, by the way, is an image that I re-shot this week on my D300, using the same settings and lens as the two examples that failed shown in my QC Tests. This one passed with no issues whatsoever, my best case yet for soft or lacking definition being linked to upscaling and not lens or technique. I'll soon forget about my QC issues, but I'm still feeling hurt from all the comments that were made...about crap glass, crap technique, crap workflow...well here is the proof.

Pictures just there in front of you

A family with prams, children and a baby, holding balloons,
with a single female, using HSBC bank cash machines in Kingston, UK
Sometimes pictures are just there in front of you, put on a plate (above). This is definitely my kind of photography, cheap, editorial, useful. I'm not sure I could have orchestrated this one better, a large family, coloured balloons, striking lighting, and the D300's best vivid colours - I might need to turn down the picture control as the saturation is uber-stock! On top of that, finance is a hot topic, family budgets, the credit crunch, people pawning their jewellery...

And then (below left), over a quiet coffee I find that the tables in front of me are empty, and the ambient lighting is interesting and I get a classic commercial shot in the bag (albeit without release). It looks perfectly staged but I assure you that every other table in the place was full, this one was no problem for my VR lens and D300 handheld, I didn't have to adjust this shot at all, it came off the camera like that.

As for the blue sky shot on the right, well even that was in the hands of the gods. This week it has been blue sky one minute, black sky the next. This was a chance shot on the way home. The M25 was jammed so I chose a different route, spotted the sign and pulled up. By the time I had taken a couple of shots of this and the adjacent offices it started raining out of blue sky (how does it do that?!) and the rest of the evening was dark and gloomy.

Inside the Moka cafe restaurant in the Bentall Centre, Kingston, London, UK

Renault UK Ltd head office, Maple Cross, UK 1/2 showing logo on standard

Here's to lucky shots, let's hope they get spotted.

For those following the QC angle on my blog, all three of these shots came straight off the camera looking like this. Upsized by 120% in Capture NX and saved as JPEG, straight through QC, and finally Bob's your mother's brother and all that...

Discount license
If you want to license the images directly at a discount, contact the photographer at sales@smyrnoff.com otherwise use the links above to license through Alamy.

Grow your own fruit

Tayberry plant isolated on white showing leaves and fruit

It has been an eventful week, with some harsh criticism of my images on the Alamy forum. I don't wish to dwell on it, but since this is my own soapbox I will just say this; If you are not interested in the QC Tests, don't post a comment.

Back to new photography, and this little gem has made it through. It is quite nice that this image could be used to illustrate growing your own fruit, as I actually grew it. I did have to sacrifice the two un-ripe fruits as I removed the whole branch but that's just what you have to do in the name of stock. Tayberries however, are not very common, and I am loathed to keyword it as a raspberry (even though I'd probably get away with it), so it will probably not sell.

Enjoy the picture, I enjoyed the berry!

Harvest time in rainy August

Sadly the summer has already finished here, the rain has set in and this last week has been miserable. Just time to post up a couple of my last D100 submissions to Alamy.


Stormy clouds over Thirlmere, Lake District


One of the failings of the 6MP camera is the absolute detail you need to shoot landscapes. These examples are acceptable as prints and will be fine at small sizes but I don't think they will ever get put on a cover or a commercial project. Still, they do show something of the British countryside, at it's moodiest and sunniest...


High tension power lines across a wheat field panorama with pylons to the horizon 1/3


This next one was shot in the depths of Berkshire, a county that I always thought as quite surburban. Luckily, five minutes drive south from where we live, the roads are quieter so long as you avoid the main arteries.


Tractor bailing hay in a field at harvest time 1/4

Excited...then blackout

This year has been a year of blackouts in our street. This isn't normal, this isn't expected, I'm a little embarrassed to say that we take power for granted in the UK.

This month has been a month of blackouts in our street. We've woken up to my alarm going off, and realised that Anna's won't be. Typically we've lost 5-10 hours of power once a week.

Yesterday it finally broke. I got home in a state of excitement as my D300 arrived at work and I wanted to take pictures and read the manual and the weather was terrible, black clouds, squally rain and..no power. Five minutes before I arrived home the power went off and it didn't return until the small hours of this morning. Apparently they had to dig up the road (not our road strangely - even though only our road was affected) in the middle of the night. Hopefully they've fixed it once and for all.



Close-up of the pages of a book 5/6


So after we popped out for dinner, I managed to read 50 pages of the 427 page D300 manual...yes 427 pages. This thing is more powerful than the laptop I'm writing on. It literally wants to take pictures for you. It is a piece of art too, the screen on the back, the viewfinder, the live view and the feel of the photos it produces. It is honestly like rediscovering professional photography again. For the first time I've found a camera which makes everything look better than it really is.

Of course I'm sure I can find a way to take boring pictures, after all, that's what I do. Until I get back home I won't be able to show off any pictures, but this camera will get me shooting again, even if I fail QC (which I'm sure I'll manage), I won't care because I can shoot landscapes with this camera...a subject which was off limits for stock at 6MP.

Alamy Measures Stats July 2008

Last month was both my best and my worst. Alamy took the opportunity to re-rank their contributors and because of my lack of zooms and sales in the preceding period they have downgraded both my pseudonyms. That is quite a blow as my CTR was rising and I reached the 200 picture mark. At the same time, last month I made my first sales! I sold two pictures, the first picture twice (once for a printed folder and once for an associated web page) and the second picture for an educational book. The second one is intriguing, and I've posted it here, because I can't think of an educational use for such a specific image. What I do know is that John Lewis this weekend announced a fall in profits so the same image got quite a few views over the weekend but alas no other sales as yet (fingers crossed that the papers used it and will report the use in due course). It is not a very exciting image (slight understatement!!! and remember, with a D100 I don't even get to crop!) but I am proud of the sale nonetheless, after all, I must have got the keywording right! Without further ado, here is my view of Alamy for the month of July: Proportion of searches for: 1 word = 13% , average of 17.21 pages viewed 2 words = 43% , average of 11.93 pages viewed 3 words = 29% , average of 6.09 pages viewed 4 words = 10% , average of 6.15 pages viewed 5+ words = 6% , average of 11.02 pages viewed

The John Lewis customer collections depot in Reading, Berkshire, showing delivery vans

Total number of pictures at end of month: 206 Number of sales for month: 3 Average number of my pictures viewed matching query: 2.43 Total average CTR for searches in which my images appeared: 1.43% My CTR: 0.63% Proportion of searches for: 5 letter words 18.72% 7 letter words 14.87% 4 letter words 14.62% 6 letter words 12.82% 3 letter words 11.79% 8 letter words 11.03% 2 letter words 5.13% 9 letter words 5.13% 10 letter words 2.56% 11 letter words 1.54% 12 letter words 1.28% 13 letter words 0.26% 17 letter words 0.26% Most popular words (top 5 in each position): First word: Cape, coastal, berkshire, Edinburgh, mudeford Second word: and, town, bin, erosion, boat Third word: uk, bin, table, south, bag Fourth word: uk, mountain, africa, and, station

Stop! Thief! and dispatch my D300

Last week flew by and so I don't have much to report. My efforts to Shoot! the Day came to nothing, the weekend before last, as I managed to contract a stomach bug which left me in northern France but totally incapable of doing anything, I spent the whole of Friday trying to sleep it off in the front seats of my car while the sun beat down overhead. Saturday, I recovered, but struggled to take pictures whilst leading a convoy of ten cars across the fields between Abbeville and le Touquet-Paris-Plage. The french villages were stunningly pretty with stately homes peeking out between wrought iron gates, but all the while I was following TomTom on shortest route, and watching the RX-7's trailing behind me. Our speed meant that this was a spirited drive rather than sight-seeing per-se, much to the annoyance of one old boy in a Skyline (he's in his early twenties!)

Anyhow, I digress, as the reason to post today is not because of photos, but because of cameras. I've taken the plunge and bought a D300 off Ebay, to put to rest my failing battle with stock quality and Alamy QC. The problem, and the reason for no new photos today, is that the seller has not contacted me since I won (last Tuesday). I am hoping that this is not going to end in tears, but the chunk of money I paid by PayPal is looking more and more at risk.


A Thames Valley Police helicopter searching the fields
near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, UK 3/5

I've had a few scrapes with Ebay. Once I was conned by a hijacked account, in the days before such things were expected, and lost a grand, and I've had some small things go astray. Since then I have bought a good deal of my photographic gear from shops in the UK, and in the far east, via Ebay, and not had a problem. Both my main Nikkor lenses came this route and saved me well over £300 on UK retail. Whether this is a real saving when you consider the lack of UK warranty is debatable, but that's the trade-off for getting great gear on a budget. Ironically, this new purchase is from a UK individual who bought a UK camera in February from Jessops (and will supply the receipt) and so I was paying a little extra for the warranty.

So I took the "Buy it Now" option and paid a fair price. I had already emailed the seller asking about the origin of the camera and I received a prompt reply which gave me confidence, but since, nada...zip...

Watch this space, I guess...

EDIT: And this space is now full. The camera arrived today and appears in perfect working order. So QC, let's see what you make of this...

P.S. Had to order a new memory card, 2Gb won't get me very far with this one!

P.P.S. Now I'm very very excited...D300 review